escape, and the more romantic the escape the better. Not to live, but to dream, is the question. Fiction is the only source of those blessed illusions which Ibsen called _vital lies_ and which he thought it his duty as a realist to challenge.” It would be worth while to dwell on this original defense of fiction. As I have attempted to show in the different chapters of this book, romantic evasion plays a primordial part in the American novel to-day. It is the natural result of the inhibitions which torture the Puritans. Like the characters of Hawthorne, Dreiser, Anderson and Sinclair Lewis, those of Cabell are runaways. The escape from moral and social tyranny forms the chief theme of all his books. They contain a long list of evasions. Dom Manuel, count of Poictesme, suffered from a fit of self-conceit which caused him to spend his time giving life to those figures of earth which he made in his own image. But, little by little, an obscure instinct took him away from his selfish occupation. He withdrew from his mistresses, his sorcerers, his family, and finally tired of the government of his country. He gladly mounted the black charger of Death and went to see if he could find at last a true picture of himself in the water of the Styx. Perion de la Forest, Demetrios and Ashaverus, took a similar flight in “Domnei.” The three lovers of Melisande lost their faith in love and deserted their dame to marry Freedom. Florian de Puysange, in “The High Place,” obtained the favors of Melior, a fairy, at the peril of his life, but he soon declared that all amorous gratifications were idle and died disenchanted. The most famous evasion, since the days of Latude, was that of Jurgen, the pawnbroker turned emperor and pope, and who finally evades heaven and hell in order to return to his shrew and to his pawnshop. Evasion through passion, or evasion through dreams, the one bitter, the other a sham but a peace-bringer,--what else is there in life, except routine? In spite of their disillusionments and their romantic failures, Cabell’s heroes never repented their waking dreams. They would do it all over again, if they could. They fail in their search but the thrill was worth the trouble of the journey. They hug only ghosts in the dark, but they went through the dark, and enjoyed the trip.